Oh, Fransson!: Vintage Fun

I am not a thrift store person. While I love the idea of revamping old stuff, thrift stores generally make me cough incessantly and want to wash my hands about 100 times. However, I was out visiting some yesterday afternoon, in search of something I needed for a project. I decided, kind of randomly, to stop at the Goodwill near my house (the one near 185th/Tanasbourne).

I don't expect much from Portland-area thrift stores. They never seem to have the awesome stuff that people I see online seem to find. (Certainly nothing as great as those mythic "tag sales" Martha Stewart is always talking about!) I expect even less from the ones on the westside but, under a pile of random crap, I saw what I thought was a retro mini desk. Perfect for a laptop desk in my new sewing room!

As I got closer I thought: Wow, that desk is very small. Is it supposed to be for a child? Then, after moving all of the stuff off the top of it, I realized that, duh!, it was a sewing machine cabinet. At this point, it honestly didn't occur to me that there would really be a machine in there. I was just thinking that the fact that it was an old sewing machine cabinet made it an even better choice as a desk for my sewing room.

Then I opened it up and, not only was there a machine in there, it was sporty and pink!

I looked in the drawers and found that they contained: the original manual, an incredible exploded diagram with every last screw in the machine labeled, and an assortment of feet (including a ruffler, an invisible zipper foot, and a darning foot). For $39.99, I wasn't going to pass it up.

Here's what I think I know about the machine . . .

It's a Nelco R-1000. Made in Japan for Nelco Sewing Machine Corp of New York. From what I gather, this isn't a brand that collectors get too excited about. It seems there are many more Japanese-made machines from the post WWII period than domestic machines like Singers. The information I've been able to find is sketchy, but I get the impression that Nelco machines were specifically-designed to be knock-offs of Necchis and Elnas (hence the name).

Nelco has quite the interesting history. Unfortunately, as one might expect, Necchi and Elna's reaction to the Nelco brand seems to have been less than positive.

I can't find any date on the machine or in the manual, but the inside of the cabinet is stamped "Jul 27 1965." I found an illustration of a later model in this ad from a 1969 magazine, so that timing seems about right for the machine.

It looks like the machine was purchased from Oden's Sewing Store in Omaha. (Which I prefer to think of as being run by Greg Oden.) I, of course, have no idea how it found its way out here!

In one of the drawers, I found a plastic ruler with a 1977 calendar on one side and the address of a (now-defunct) bank on the other. The bank address would have been maybe 1-2 miles from the Goodwill where I purchased the machine. That, and the fact that the machine appears to be in wonderful condition leads me to speculate that between 1977 and when it was taken to the Goodwill last Saturday, it may have just been sitting in a house in Oak Hills or Rock Creek.

In the photo above, you can see the buttons for adjusting the position of the feed dogs up or down. There's even an intermediate feed dog setting for sewing fine fabrics. Besides a bunch of crazy decorative stitches that I will probably never use, the machine does a regular zigzag and an automatic four-step buttonhole.

I guess the best news is that it works beautifully -- both fast and quiet! I'm going to have to play around with it a bit, but I think this may be a machine that I can actually use for non-quilting projects.

I plan to refinish the cabinet (and I do still plan to use it as a laptop desk when I'm not sewing) but I'm not sure about the metal handles. I can't decide whether they'll look better once the cabinet is refinished, whether I should try painting them silver, or whether I should attempt to find replacements. I'm guessing that finding replacements may be difficult, since they look like kind of an odd size, but I have some time to think about it.

If you'd like to see more pictures, please check out my Flickr set.

Earlier this year, my father showed me a box of quilts that one of his Iowa relatives sent him years ago. Of the quilts in the box, a few of them really stood out to me. Now that it's warm and dry enough for outdoor photography, I thought I would share some photos!

Let's start with my favorite one. This is a scrappy log cabin, made with light and dark value fabrics that appeared to me to be mainly from old clothes.

This quilt had the above tag pinned to it. Are you surprised this scrappy log cabin was made in 1926? I think we often forget how heavily-influenced contemporary quilting is by older styles.

Each of these blocks is about 4" across and it looked to me like the entire thing was hand pieced. I didn't measure, but the quilt appeared to be approximately the size of a contemporary Twin bed quilt.

All of the blocks had a tiny red solid center, but the blocks at the center of the quilt were pieced with more of it. The binding was made from the same red solid.

I love the colors in this quilt!

This is a smaller version of the same quilt, also made by Nan Green. According to a note that came with the box of quilts, this was intended as a baby-sized companion to the other.

The colors in this one are a little more muted, but there's still that red solid at the center of every block. This one also had a lot of a butter yellow solid, as shown above.

As you can see, this one shows some wear. I suppose this would disappoint some collectors or quilt historians, but it actually makes me happy for Nan. It means that somebody got a lot of use out of her quilt!

Both of these log cabin quilts are tied with the knot and tails on the back of the quilt (so the ties are barely visible from the front). I'm guessing this may have been common at the time these quilts were made (maybe it's common still!) but it was new to me. To me, it appeared they were tied "backwards,"

This is another hand pieced quilt, but this one was also hand quilted. It's a large bed-sized quilt made entirely in three solid colors.

Here's a closer view of the quilting and piecing. Those yellow kites and blue octagons are solid pieces, so there was clearly some complex piecing going on.

This one reminds me of a crocheted afghan! It's also bed-sized and pieced with hundreds of tiny squares set on point.

The colored rings radiate out from the center. Each color wave includes one ring of solid squares and several rings of similarly-colored prints.

Here's a close-up that shows the hand quilting. This one didn't have a tag but, based on the prints, my non-expert opinion is that it was made in the 1930's.